In the US and Europe, OnePlus isn’t a household name – yet. In India, the company is facing huge success following the release of the OnePlus 6, which saw them beat out big names such as Samsung and Apple in the premium market. They’ve kept that form going for another quarter of the year according to Counterpoint Research’s latest analysis, just in time for the release of the OnePlus 6T.
The company’s success in India makes sense, especially given how aggressively they’ve marketed within the region. With India-only sales, a partnership with Amazon.in, and more, they’re clearly taking that market very seriously. Budget smartphones have always been popular in the region as well, and the biggest selling point of OnePlus devices has always been their price to performance ratio. One can argue that yes, their prices have gone up, but relative to other flagships they’re still some of the cheapest around.
Whether a phone is deemed premium or not is decided by its cost. Anything above ₹30,000 (roughly $400) is considered premium. There was a litany of offers available for all kinds of flagship smartphones in the past quarter which helped increase phone sales even further, such as the aforementioned Amazon Great Indian Festival sales for the OnePlus 6. The premium flagship market in India is starting to dilute with the entrance of new devices from the likes of Vivo, OPPO, Huawei, ASUS and LG. As such, OnePlus, Samsung and Apple only control about 83% of the premium market as opposed to 88% of it like last quarter.
The OnePlus 6 is also the best selling smartphone in the premium segment, pretty unsurprising given how well it sold in contrast to previous models. It was followed by the Samsung Galaxy Note 9 and the Samsung Galaxy A8 Star. The OnePlus 6 held a whopping 30% of the premium segment’s market share.
Whether the company can hold its success with the upcoming OnePlus 6T remains to be seen. With a removed headphone jack and an in-display fingerprint sensor to name a few changes, there’s a vocal part of the fanbase that is very against the direction the company is headed. Whether it will affect sales significantly is yet to be seen, but it won’t be long until we find out.
Source: https://www.xda-developers.com/oneplus-leading-samsung-apple-india/